Rachel Levinson-Waldman

Senior Counsel

Rachel Levinson-Waldman serves as Senior Counsel to the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, which seeks to advance effective national security policies that respect constitutional values and the rule of law. Ms. Levinson-Waldman is active on issues related to policing and technology, including providing commentary on law enforcement access to social media, predictive policing, body cameras, license plate readers, and other types of surveillance technologies deployed in public. Most recently, Ms. Levinson-Waldman published an article in the Emory Law Review on the intersection of the Fourth Amendment and a range of surveillance technologies, titled Hiding in Plain Sight: A Fourth Amendment Framework for Analyzing Government Surveillance in Public. Ms. Levinson-Waldman has also authored a Brennan Center report, What the Government Does with Americans’ Data, on the federal government’s use, sharing, and retention of non-criminal information about Americans for law enforcement and national security purposes.

Ms. Levinson-Waldman regularly comments for television, radio, and print on issues relating to national security, privacy, and surveillance. Her writing has been featured in publications including Bloomberg View, The New Republic, Wired, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, U.S. News & World Report, and Salon.com, and she has been interviewed for Al Jazeera, Nerding Out, and Let Your Voice Be Heard, among others.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Ms. Levinson-Waldman served as counsel to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), focusing particularly on matters related to academic freedom and the First Amendment. Previously, she served as a Trial Attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, litigating matters under the Fair Housing Act.

Ms. Levinson-Waldman is a graduate of Williams College and the University of Chicago Law School, and clerked for the Honorable M. Margaret McKeown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.